EU crackdown could change Google

The European Union — and not U.S. regulators — may ultimately crack down on Google for allegedly manipulating search results to show off some of its own products first, but that also could mean changes for American consumers.

European regulators can't control what the company does in the United States, but there may be practical reasons for Google to change its ways across the globe.

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The FTC probe of Google’s search business appears headed for a resolution as early as this week, with the commission letting Google off the hook by voluntarily making some changes in search, including limiting use of reviews from rival sites and making it easier to port keyword search campaigns to other search services, POLITICO reported Saturday.

But if the EU pursues more drastic changes such as preventing Google from listing its own services ahead of rivals in search results, Google would likely have to build parallel systems — showing European users one set of search results and Americans another. It’s a technical hurdle the vaunted brain trust from Mountain View, Calif., could surely surmount, but it would shine a continual, real-time light on practices consumer advocates and rivals say is unfair.

“It’s going to be very complex for Google to change its behavior in Europe and to stay put elsewhere in the world,” said Nicolas Petit, professor at the Institute of Competition Law at the University of Liège in Belgium and director of the European Institute for Judicial Studies. “How could they change the way they do business here and not the rest of the world? It’s a global service.”

For nearly two years, Google has been investigated by both the FTC and the European Union on a variety of antitrust allegations. The biggest of those is whether the world’s dominant search engine engages in anticompetitive behavior by manipulating results to shunt users unknowingly toward Google-owned properties for shopping, travel and other services. Others include Google’s use of “snippets” of content from other websites — like reviews from TripAdvisor or Yelp — without permission and contracts that make it difficult for users of Google Ad Words to compare prices for buying “keyword” ads with other search services.

Knowledgeable sources said Google will commit to addressing those last two concerns by voluntarily making changes to its business practices.

But it now appears that the FTC doesn’t have the votes to press an antitrust case on the larger issues of alleged search manipulation and is focused on settling a related case with Google — possibly within days — on the company’s use of patents that are part of industry-wide standards for smartphones and other devices to block rivals’ products. But the EU’s competition commissioner has indicated it may bring a search case against Google by the end of the year.